The manufacturing lead-time for injection mold tools is typically 3 to 8 weeks in the telecom industry. The process of manufacturing an injection mold tool is complex and involves many steps, the main ones being:                Component CAD (computer aided design) file import and adjustment/correction;        Mold tool design;        Creation of numerical control programs for CNC (computer numerical control) machine tools;        Rough machining of tool components;        Hardening of tool components;        Finish machining of tool components;        Machining of electrodes for electro discharge machining (EDM);        EDM of tool components;        Tool assembly.        
One of the issues in the manufacture of tooling is a set up of the tool room logistics to minimize the manufacturing lead-time. In consumer product industries where time to market is critical, tooling lead-time is often an important factor for product development.
Conventional tool rooms utilize production planning systems that contain significant elements of waiting time for individual tool components. Much of this waiting time is to compensate for a lack of visibility of the component status and availability of the component to start the next process.
Another feature of conventional tool rooms is the serial manufacture of identical/similar components. This is often due to restrictions or bottlenecks within the machining capacity.
Tool manufacturing at short lead times in a consistent manner is usually mostly constrained by the topography of the manufacturing system.
Furthermore, there are several relevant areas which include (but are not limited to):                Palletized chip identification systems. Such systems exist in the precision tooling industry. One particularly well known one is that by EROWA JMS PRO or ZWICKER WINSTAT.        Tool room shop floor logistics management systems. A number of software systems exist as commercially available products, typically from such suppliers as SYSTEM 3R, EROWA and ZWICKER.        Robot served sub cells in machining systems. For example, a commercially available system from EROWA consists of a storage carousel positioned between two machine tools and a robot which moves pre-palletised components between the storage carousels and machine tools as directed by the shop floor logistics management system, wherein one robot serves maximum two machine tools (e.g., see U.S. Pat. No. 6,754,557 “System and Method for Manufacturing Plastic and Injection Stack Components” by Len Graham). A cell operator loads components onto a fixture and measures any required datum offset dimensions. This fixture is then loaded to a storage carousel that is able to read an identification chip from the fixture. When the machine tool is available, the robot takes the palletized work piece and loads it to the machine tool using a fixture chucking system. The logistics management software also loads a necessary CNC instruction program to the same machine tool. When the machining operation is complete, the robot returns the palletized work piece to the storage carousel. As well as moving the work piece, it is also common to move pre-mounted electrodes between the storage carousel and the machine tool—as typically required for EDM processes. The storage system does not have to be a carousel and, e.g., in ZIMMER and KREIM system, the storage system is a plain rack.        